Your Message Matters by Jonathan Milligan

Author:Jonathan Milligan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business/Entrepreneurship;Success in business;Entrepreneurship;Motivation (Psychology);Confidence;BUS107000;BUS025000;SEL027000
ISBN: 9781493427789
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

10

Mission Control

Establishing Your Home Base

For our twenty-first wedding anniversary, my wife and I spent a week in New York City. On the third day of our visit, we decided to do a bit of exploring in Central Park. The park is conveniently located right in the middle of the “city that never sleeps.” Most people are surprised by the park’s massive size when they see it for the first time. Its rolling 842 acres offer plenty of room to explore, go for a jog, or just enjoy some peace and quiet. I’ve had the opportunity to explore Central Park a few times. Every time I go, I experience a new section of the park I’ve never seen before.

As my wife and I were walking through the middle of the park, we came around a bend and saw something that stopped us in our tracks. It was a 130-foot-high Victorian-style castle known as Belvedere Castle. We noticed people were in the castle, so we decided to take a closer look. We navigated our way through cobbled paths and old stone-carved winding staircases until we finally reached the top. We were standing at Central Park’s second-highest elevation point, the first being Summit Rock. The view was breathtaking.

Once we got back to the hotel, I decided to do a bit of research on the castle. I had questions about how the castle got there and why it was even built in the first place. It turns out the name Belvedere means “beautiful view” in Italian. That certainly seemed like the right name for that castle.

As I investigated further, I discovered the reason the castle was built was to be a folly. That seemed strange to me. I associate the word folly as meaning useless, a waste, or foolish. As I looked deeper into the story, I realized I wasn’t far off in my assessment. A Victorian Folly, as it’s known, is a structure whose main function is to be ornamental, serving no practical use and without an intended purpose. And for many years, that’s the role this castle served. In fact, in the 1960s, Belvedere Castle was closed to the public and became known as a symbol of neglect, deterioration, and vandalism.1 Luckily, that’s not the end of the story.

Following a $12 million renovation that concluded in 2019, the castle today serves as a visitor center and gift shop. It’s estimated that this once desolate castle now hosts over a million tourists each year. Just like Belvedere Castle, your home base, your website, can also have one of two outcomes. It can fail and waste your resources, or it can succeed and serve as a place of service.

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